Rosamunde Pilcher > Quotes

“She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Wild Mountain Thyme

“She remembered him smiling, and realized that time, that great old healer, had finally accomplished its work, and now, across the years, the face of love no longer stirred up agonies of grief and bitterness. Rather, one was left feeling simply grateful. For how unimaginably empty the past would be without him to remember.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you've got.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Life is sweet. . . Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“It was good and nothing good is ever lost.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“And the wicked thing is, that when we're really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“Life is so extraordinary. Wonderful surprises are just around the most unexpected corners.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“Alone. She realized how much she had missed the luxury of solitude, and knew that its occasional comfort would always be essential to her. The pleasure of being on one's own was not so much spiritual as sensuous, like wearing silk, or swimming without a bathing suit, or walking along a totally empty beach with the sun on your back. One was restored by solitude. Refreshed.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home

“Things happen they way they're meant to. There's a pattern and a shape to everything...Nothing happens without a reason...Nothing is impossible...(Page 180).”
― Rosamunde Pilcher

“Grief is a funny thing because you don't have to carry it with you for the rest of your life. After a bit you set it down by the roadside and walk on and leave it resting there.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, September

“Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher

“What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily."
(Quoted from Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim)”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, September

“She may not have believed in God, but I’m pretty certain God believed in her.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Wild Mountain Thyme

“As long as Mumma was alive, she knew that some small part of herself had remained a child, cherished and adored. Perhaps you never completely grew up until your mother died.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Other people's houses were always fascinating. As soon as you went through the door for the first time, you got the feel of the atmosphere, and so discovered something about the personalities of the people who lived there.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home

“She put out her hand and touched his forearm, as she would have touched some piece of porcelain or sculpture, just for the sheer animal pleasure of feeling its shape and curve beneath her fingertips.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Not his real name, darling, but my own name for him. I never thought it could be like this. I never thought one could be so close, and yet so different to a single human being. He is everything I've never been, and yet I love him more than any person or anything I've ever known.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“She had never lived alone before, and at first found it strange, but gradually had learned to accept it as a blessing and to indulge herself in all sorts of reprehensible ways, like getting up when she felt like it, scratching herself if she itched, sitting up until two in the morning to listen to a concert.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“She yawned and stretched, and settled back again on her pillows and thought how perfect it would be if sleep could not only restore one but iron out all anxieties in the same process, so that one could wake with a totally clear and untroubled mind, as smooth and empty as a beach, washed and ironed by the outgoing tide.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home

“It was better not to get too close to another person. The closer you got, the more likely you were to get hurt.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“Time had lost its importance. That was one of the good things about getting old: you weren't perpetually in a hurry. All her life, Penelope had looked after other people, but now she had no one to think about but herself. There was time to stop and look, and, looking, to remember. Visions widened, like views seen from the slopes of a painfully climbed mountain, and having come so far, it seemed ridiculous not to pause and enjoy them.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Fear knocked at the door, Faith went to answer it, and no one was there.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, September

“You never really got to know people properly until you had seen them within the ambiance of their own home. Seen their furniture and their books and the manner of their lifestyle.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice

“Love she had found, had a strange way of multiplying. Doubling, trebling itself, so that, as each child arrived, there was always more than enough to go around.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers